Monday, June 02, 2008

Stopped by my local K-Mart today on the way home to see if I could snag some Topps or UD series 2 blasters without diverting my route to Wal-Mart. Was pleased to see that they too have a card section, although it looked a little more neglected than at the other place. No series 2's in sight, but they did have a few leftover UD Super Star pack boxes. I am still trying to get the last couple of these bronze special editions, so I snagged one of those and an '08 Heritage seven-pack-plus-one. Turns out the bonus pack in the Heritage blasters from here is just four more cards. But that's for another possible post.

So I tear the (clear) shrink wrap off the Upper Deck box. Everything is fine so far....Then I pulled out the block of cards - also shrink wrapped - still looks normal....

The block was bookended with two ad cards for using Starquest cards to earn prizes. I didn't remember the other SStar packs being like this, and for a minute I thought I got two of the inserts, but figured out that these were only ads. OK, a little weird, but not a problem. Until I looked at the cards in between....

A big stack of Upper Deck cards FROM 1994!! And a very repetitious stack at that! Every ten cards is a set of dupes or triples. Someone had to have reloaded this thing and taken it back. The bastards! Well at least the Super Star pack looks sealed....

Tore into it and....

WAAAAAHH! More Bips!

Needless to say, I'm headed back to the returns desk and now have to convince them that these are the wrong cards and that I didn't switch them.
If pack searchers deserve a good beating, then this qualifies the perpetrators for a bullethole.

UPDATE: The store took the box right back, and I checked out the other three that were left. Only one still had shrink wrap with the UD logo, so I took that one and gave the others to the girl at the service desk. I doubt they do anything unless one of the managers knows cards...

You know--when you take that back, you should talk to the manager and try to convince him to go after the schmuck who returned it the first time. They must have a record of these things--don't they always take names and phone numbers when they do returns now? Or at least try to convince the manager not to take returns on cards anymore. I wonder how often one of us buys a pack of cards that has been tampered with, but less obviously by filling with cards from the same set.

The REALLY sad part is that most stores contract this out (or provide the shelf space to a contacted person) so there is a chance the distributor is the one who did this. Shrink-wrap machines are easy to come by. Word to the wise: Don't just look for shrink wrap, also look for brand logos on the wrap, but even that is no guarantee. You can open the wrap, the box, the packs, then reseal everything without anyone being the wiser. A crooked distributor sucks - not saying that is what happened here, just sayin...